Kraken Robotics Supports Multiple Countries at NATO Exercise

Kraken Robotics Inc. recently participated in Exercise REPMUS 23 in Portugal. The Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned System (REPMUS) is focused on capability development and interoperability, and the 2023 Exercise involved 15 NATO partners, as well as Sweden and Ireland.

Kraken’s field support team was onsite throughout the exercise, working closely with three NATO navy teams (the US, UK, and Netherlands) utilizing three generations of HII’s REMUS unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), all of which were retrofitted with Kraken’s Man-Portable Synthetic Aperture Sonar (MP-SAS). The UUVs included MK18 Mod 1, REMUS 100 NGR, and REMUS 300 underwater vehicles, showing the versatility of MP-SAS and its capability to be used across multiple platforms.

Historic Multi-National Collaborative AUV Mission at REPMUS 23 featuring US Navy, Royal Netherlands Navy, and Royal Navy HII Remus AUV’s using SeeByte’s Neptune Collaborative Autonomy software. Kraken MP-SAS integrated to Royal Netherlands Navy REMUS 100 (at left) for use in Reacquire Identification (RI) mission. Photo courtesy of SeeByte Ltd. (Image credit: Kraken Robotics)

Kraken’s MP-SAS provided ultra-high resolution real time 3 cm x 3 cm imagery, with swaths of over 200 meters (>100 meters range per side), providing operators with a significantly increased area coverage rate when compared to legacy sidescan sonars (SSS) with typical ranges of <30 meters per side. Kraken also took part in a historic multi-national collaborative underwater vehicle mission, where the US Navy MK 18 Mod 2 conducted a Search-Classify-Map (SCM) mission including embedded Automated Target Recognition (ATR) identifying contacts of interest and using SeeByte’s Neptune automatically re-tasking the Royal Navy REMUS 100 and the Netherlands Navy REMUS 100 with Kraken SAS to perform Reacquire and Identification (RI) missions.

About REPMUS

The exercise is co-organised by the NATO Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), the University of Porto’s Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technology (LSTS), and NATO’s Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative (MUSI). Fifteen NATO nations participated in the exercise, along with partners Ireland and Sweden. REPMUS 23 and DYNAMIC MESSENGER 23 have developed significant partnerships between the private sector and academia, and provide guidance for technology advancements, operational concepts, doctrine, and future work programmes. Both exercises were held around the Troia Peninsula, in Portugal. Exercise Dynamic Messenger 23 took place from 18 to 29 September 2023 and Exercise REPMUS 23 took place from 11 to 22 September 2023.